About half of Indian workers are now working as wage employees and yet the rate of unemployment among them has dipped. This is the primary inference from the government report card on employment released on Friday. Latest data from the five yearly National Sample Survey Organisation report (the quinquennial 66th round survey in 2009-10) show a dip in percentage of jobless across all four different indicators compared to 2003-04, the year of the previous survey.
The 2009-10 survey numbers indicate that the unemployment rate has dipped from 8.2% to 6.6% when measured in terms of current daily status (CDS) the most acceptable measure of employment. Measured by other standards the fall was sharper. This is in line with what C Rangarajan, chairman of the Prime Minister’s Economic Advisory Council has said.
One of the big question in the India growth story is whether employment opportunities have kept pace with the rising GDP growth rate. The NSSO figures prove it is so. Bibek Debroy, professor at the Centre for Policy Research said at first read there is no doubt India is not going the jobless growth path. He said the sample set captures the very first phase of the roll out of employment programmes like the NREGA.
Indian statisticians use four standards to measure employment. Of these the CDS is the inclusive measure of unemployment as it captures data about the chronically unemployed. The five yearly sample survey shows there has been a distinct drop in unemployment at the bottom of the pyramid.
The other measures capture the status of those better off in the economic strata like the current weekly status which measures the average weekly picture during the survey year. But as the table shows by all the standards unemployment has fallen off in the past decade. For instance, the unemployment rate measured based on principal status that indicates the magnitude of unemployment for a relatively longer reference period of 365 days estimating the chronically unemployed also say the same story.
Among the four the highest fall in unemployment rate was in the CDS measure with the numbers showing a fall from 8.2% in 2004-05 to 6.6% in 2009-10. In contrast, the slowest fall in unemployment rate was in the case of the UPSS measure where the rate fell from 2.3% in 2004-05to 2% in 2009-10. In case of the PS measure the numbers show that the unemployment rate fell a little more sharply from 3.1% to 2.5% while in the case of the CWS also the fall was a little more higher with the rate moving from 4.4% to 3.6%. The unemployment rate in 1993-94 was however even lower with the rates being 6% (CDS), 3.6% (CWS), 1.9% (UPSS) and 2.6% (PS), respectively.
The 66th round of the survey also shows that 51% of the Indian workers were self-employed with the ratio at a higher 54.2% in rural areas and a lower 41.1% in urban areas. This is a decline since the past survey, but still shows that industry and the services sector has not been able to absorb half of the potential labourers available.
Among those employed, the share of casual workers was lower at 33.5% while that of regular wage/salaried employment was only 15.6%. The share of casual workers was 38.6% in rural areas and 17.3% in urban areas. In contrast, the share of regular wage/salaried employment was a higher 41.4% in urban areas and a lower 7.3% in rural areas.